The Karma Club Page 11

  Jade goes to some Internet dating site, and we’re greeted by a black welcome screen. Without even a second thought, she clicks on the giant green bubble that reads, “Find My Soul Mate Now.”

  “Okay, Seth Taylor,” Jade says with a hungry gleam of revenge in her eyes. “Prepare to meet your Mrs. Robinson.”

  From the Official Notebook of the Karma Club

  Karmic Beneficiary #4

  Name: Seth Taylor

  Background: Ex-boyfriend of Jade Bristow. The pride and joy of the Taylor family. Now dating Lila Martin, active member of UC Berkeley’s Delta Delta Delta sorority

  Universal Imbalance: Told club member he’d wait to have sex until she was ready, then had sex with someone else less than 24 hours later

  Valued Possession: His “Golden Boy” reputation

  OPERATION MRS. ROBINSON

  Dear Seth,

  Congratulations on completing your recent registration. You are now only a few clicks away from finding your soul mate! We are committed to helping you find that special someone. We hope that you enjoy all of the new and enhanced services and features we have to offer.

  Below is a preview of the online profile that you submitted. Please make sure that all the information is correct. Your profile should be live within the next 24 hours, so keep checking back with us!

  Sincerely,

  Your Faithful Matchmaking Team

  Submitted Profile for Seth Taylor

  Tell Us About You

  Name: Seth

  Age: 18

  Location: Pine Valley, CA

  Relationship Status: Never been married

  Occupation: Student

  Height: 6'1"

  Body Type: Athletic

  Interests/Hobbies: Track, weight lifting, nightclubs, movies

  Relationship Goals: Just for fun

  Turn-ons: Boldness/Assertiveness, flirting, public displays of affection, mature women

  Tell Us About Your Perfect Match

  Gender: Female

  Age Range: 40–55

  Height Range: 5'0"–5'9"

  Body Type: Any

  Hair Color: Any

  Relationship History: Never been married, currently separated, divorced

  On Wednesday afternoon, I find myself exactly where I planned to be: in Seth Taylor’s kitchen, tutoring his little brother in algebra.

  Jacob Taylor is not really a dumb kid, he was just unfortunate enough to be born as the younger brother of Seth, the pride and joy of the Taylor family. Good at school, good at sports, cute, charming, polite, blah blah blah. Also really good at cheating on his girlfriends.

  Jacob is not as smart, not as cute, definitely not as charming, and just overall . . . not Seth. He spends the majority of his time getting high with his other slacker friends. And it doesn’t take a psychology degree to figure out why younger siblings like Jacob don’t really apply themselves in anything they do. Because in their minds, what’s the freaking point?

  I wait for the perfect moment to sneak away, while Jacob is chewing on a five-step systems equation problem, and I excuse myself to use the restroom.

  I make my way down the hall toward the Taylor boys’ bathroom, flip on the light and the fan, and close the door so that anyone passing by will think that it’s occupied. Then I tiptoe further down the hall to Seth’s bedroom, step inside, and shut the door behind me.

  I know for sure that today Seth is at track practice because I saw him running laps on my way out of the school parking lot, so I figure I’m safe in here until at least five o’clock, when practice is over, or until Jacob sends out a search party for me when I don’t return from the bathroom.

  I can’t believe how immaculate the room is. Everything is exactly where it’s supposed to be. There’s not a crumb in sight, a clothing article on the ground, or a stray piece of paper lying on the desk. Jade warned me that the room might look like this. True to his Golden Boy image, Seth’s also obsessive-compulsive when it comes to his things, which only adds yet another item to the list of reasons why Seth and his brother are exact opposites. Jacob’s room, which I saw briefly when we went hunting through stacks of paper on the floor for his last algebra test to review, is probably on the watch list for the next federal disaster area.

  Seth’s immaculateness and attention to detail only help us in our quest. He keeps everything pertaining to his life and his schedule on his PDA cell phone, a birthday present from his parents, which he keeps with him at all times. And since Seth’s schedule for the week is exactly the information that we’re after, Jade suggested an alternative way of accessing it.

  “The minute he gets home from school,” she explained to me before I left for my tutoring session with Jacob, “he always sits down at his desk and syncs that stupid thing with his precious computer. He did it every day the entire time we were dating. And not until after the information was transferred over would we be able to make out or do anything remotely fun. It was incredibly lame.”

  I quickly take a seat at his desk and turn on his laptop. I open up the right application, and the screen immediately fills with a weekly schedule. I quickly press print and wait as the schedule prints. I grab it and stuff it in my back pocket. Then I shut the computer down and head back toward the closed door.

  But as I reach for the door handle, I hear a faint knocking sound followed by Jacob’s voice. “Maddy?”

  Okay, not good.

  Don’t panic, I instruct myself as I stop dead in my tracks, my hand frozen in midair. There’s a reasonable explanation for why I’m in here, I just have to find it. If I were Jade, I would have already come up with three, and I’d be able to deliver them with flawless credibility thanks to my perfected theatrical skills. Only problem is, I’m not Jade. I’m Madison (I feel my full name is probably appropriate here given the gravity of my current predicament). And Madison doesn’t act very well. She also has a lot of trouble lying. And at the moment, apparently breathing as well.

  There’s another knock, and I soon realize that it’s coming not from outside this door but rather from further down the hallway, at the bathroom door.

  I should have known! Jacob doesn’t think I’m in here, he thinks I’m in the bathroom. Because I turned on the light and the fan and closed the door.

  Then I hear his voice say, “Maddy, are you all right?”

  And I know I can’t answer back because it won’t sound like it’s coming from behind the bathroom door, it’ll sound like it’s coming from behind this door. So I press my lips together tightly and try to figure a way out of this. If no answer comes from behind the bathroom door, pretty soon he’ll get worried and either try to open it or call for backup. Like parents or even an ambulance. And that could get messy.

  I glance frantically around the room, searching for something—anything—that can help me out of this.

  Then I feel a vibrating in my pocket and I remember my cell phone. I pull it out, ignore the text message that just arrived from Angie, and navigate to my phone book to find Jacob’s cell number.

  I block my number from his caller ID and then dial. As I wait for it to ring, I hold my breath until I hear the faint sound of Jacob’s cell phone ringing down the hall.

  I listen to his footsteps as they fade away, and I end the call. Then I dash out the door, close it behind me, and open the bathroom door to shut off the light and the fan. Before I can turn around again, I hear Jacob’s voice ask, “Are you okay?”

  I whip back to see him standing there at the end of the hallway, his cell phone in hand, looking at me with this really weird expression. Kind of like a mix between concern and disgust.

  I sigh. “Yeah, sorry it took me so long.” Then, for effect, I fake a stomach cramp. “Ugh,” I moan. “You don’t want to know.”

  Yeah, I know it’s gross. Because I’m signaling to Jacob that either I’m on my period or I have some really bad indigestion (I’m not sure which is worse). But as they say in sports, I just have to suck it up and take one for the team. />
  Jacob keeps looking at me, not sure what to make of it. Then he says, “I was knocking on the door and calling your name, but you didn’t answer.”

  I swallow hard. “Um . . . you were?”

  He nods, still studying me with that same strange expression.

  “How about that? I guess I didn’t hear you because of the, um . . .” I look back toward the bathroom. “Fan and everything. It’s really loud in there.” Then I flash this innocent smile that I used on my parents when I was little and trying to get away with something I knew full well I wasn’t supposed to get away with. But then again, it never really worked back then, so I’m not quite sure why I’m relying on it now.

  To my great surprise and delight, Jacob shrugs, looks down at his cell phone, and says, “Whatever. I missed a call from a blocked number. I hate when people block their phone numbers. Just tell me who you are and stop hiding behind technology.”

  I nod sympathetically as we walk back to the kitchen together. “Yeah, that’s freaking annoying,” I echo and then fall back into my seat. “So where were we?”

  The goal of Operation Mrs. Robinson is to find the clingiest, neediest, most desperate over-forties women out there and arrange for them to meet Seth at a public place, preferably while he’s surrounded by friends, family members, or, better yet, his new college girlfriend.

  Fortunately, we don’t have to look for very long. The women seem to flock to us . . . or rather, to Seth, like desert travelers to a mirage.

  We submitted Seth’s profile on Tuesday afternoon, and in just a few short days, his in-box is absolutely overflowing with messages, chat invitations, phone numbers, and even a few naked photographs, which, trust me, none of us were quite prepared to see.

  When the three of us gather at Jade’s house on Thursday night, the first thing we do is pore over Seth’s schedule and then diligently divide up the various times and locations of his plans among the top candidates we’ve weeded out from the e-mails.

  In a few hours, we have arranged over fifteen “blind dates” for Seth Taylor. In this case, the word blind is a fairly accurate description, given the fact that Seth won’t even know he is on a date. And just so we don’t lose track of all the details, I record all of these dates, including times, locations, and the names of the women that Seth has unknowingly extended invitations to meet, in the official Karma Club notebook. It’s amazing how confusing it can get keeping track of fifteen different women at one time.

  Of course, we were very adamant in our e-mails to all the women that how they “met” should not be mentioned in front of Seth’s friends, as he doesn’t want them to know that he’s registered with an online dating site. So we ask each of them to kindly make up a creative and fun story as opposed to telling the truth.

  The plan works absolutely brilliantly.

  For the next few days, Seth is completely bombarded. Almost everywhere he goes there’s a woman over forty, desperately trying to look thirty-five, hitting on him. And most of them are not so subtle in letting him know that they’re “open to pretty much anything.”

  Angie, Jade, and I spend our days sneaking around the various blind date locations to witness the glorious mortification first-hand. Like when Sandy, our forty-nine-year-old music industry executive, showed up at brunch with Seth’s parents and grandparents, sat down at the table next to Seth, and said, “Ah, honey, I think it’s sweet that you invited your family on our first date, but I already told you, I’m not looking for anything serious. I’m just looking for someone to have sex with to get back at my cheating scumbag of a husband,” the three of us were sitting inconspicuously at a nearby booth trying to contain our laughter.

  Or when Leanne, the forty-four-year-old flight attendant, showed up at Lenny’s bar in Berkeley and asked Seth point-blank, in front of his girlfriend and her friends, if he wouldn’t mind having children right away because her biological clock only has a few ticks left in it, the three of us were eavesdropping from the next table.

  But the absolute highlight came on Monday night, when Seth was scheduled to hang out with his girlfriend, Lila, at his house and three different women came knocking at his door. Jade, Angie, and I were camped out behind the bushes that lined the Taylors’ driveway, sharing a pair of binoculars like a bunch of celebrity stalkers.

  When the final woman showed up and Seth reluctantly opened the door, she wasted no time showing him how little she was wearing underneath her trench coat. And fortunately, Lila, who was getting visibly more irritated with each unexpected visitor, was standing right behind him when it happened. It really couldn’t have played out any more perfectly.

  Lila immediately pushed past him and stormed out of the house, ranting like a crazy person. It was kind of hard to understand her in the middle of all that commotion, especially with the woman still standing there half-naked on Seth’s front stoop, but I did manage to catch the words sicko and pervert coming out of her mouth as she stomped past our bush.

  So before long, Seth Taylor had a new reputation to defend at school. One that often involved the acronym MILF in its description.

  And it’s pretty safe to say his parents won’t be using the term Golden Boy when referring to their older son anymore.

  After most of the damage is done, we decide to remove Seth’s online dating profile and delete the e-mail account that it was associated with. To make sure the mystery of his downfall forever remains just that . . . a mystery. And even if one of the women did mention the dating site and he did go in search of his own profile, there would be no evidence left of his demise.

  Except for the new charms on our bracelets. Although it’s hardly likely that anyone would be able to link the two seemingly unconnected items. Especially when the charm that we picked out is so very generic and common for girls our age. It’s in the shape of a graduation cap. Not because the three of us will be wearing very similar caps in only a few short months, as most people will probably speculate, but because Seth Taylor is officially our new Graduate.

  THE PROOF IS IN THE FACEBOOK PROFILE

  The next Friday, I’m back in the library tutoring Spencer in French again, counting down the minutes until I can go home.

  Today is an especially hard day for me to cope because it just happens to be Mason’s birthday, and I had been planning his big eighteenth birthday bash for the past year. I had the venue picked out, the decorations, the music, everything! I was going to do a politics theme, seeing that he’s the class president and totally into political science and because at age eighteen you’re finally considered a legal citizen and therefore able to vote.

  I thought it was a pretty creative idea, but according to all the buzz going around the hallways, Heather is throwing him some kind of hot, exclusive, Hollywood-themed party tonight with limos and expensive gift bags and a live band. And even I can admit that sounds a hundred times better than what I had planned. But the thought of Mason spending his big special night with someone as perfect and gorgeous as Heather Campbell doing God knows what in her perfect, gorgeous Mediterranean mansion just makes my heart lurch. And it certainly doesn’t help matters that her face has, regrettably, yet to show any signs of breaking out and she probably looks especially good in lingerie . . .

  Okay, I promised I wouldn’t let myself think about that stuff.

  “Maddy?” Spencer brings my attention back to the subject at hand. Which today is the use of conditional if phrases. Like, I would go to the store if I had money. Or I would not be here if I had just listened to Mr. Wilson when he was talking.

  “Yeah?” I respond, as if I’m not really sure why he’s calling my name when I’m sitting right here.

  Spencer laughs and says, “It looked like you were somewhere else.”

  I shake my head adamantly. “No, no. I’m here.”

  “I guess this stuff is about as exciting to you as it is to me.”

  “Sorry,” I finally say. “I’m paying attention.”

  And then, like he’s some kind of freak
-show mind reader, he goes, “Mason’s birthday?”

  My head immediately pops up. Much higher than it’s supposed to go, actually. “What?” I ask, trying to sound casual.

  “Were you thinking about Mason’s birthday party tonight?” Spencer rephrases his question.

  And now I’m wondering if maybe he’s one of those rare people who can read minds. And if that’s the case, I’m really screwed because I’ve already thought on more than one occasion how crappy it is that I’m stuck tutoring this guy. Then again, if he can read minds, I guess he’d be reading these thoughts too. And then I suppose I could look up at him and he’d raise his eyebrows and nod his head as if to say, “Yes, I’m a freak, I can read your thoughts.”

  On the other hand, if he wanted to keep his superpower a secret, he wouldn’t nod, because he knows I’m expecting it because I just thought it.

  God, this is confusing.

  Well, anyway, even if he can read minds, it’s not like I will admit that he’s right, so I simply respond by saying, “No,” in a really defensive voice. “Why would you think that?”

  Spencer shrugs. “You had this far-off look in your eyes, and I know the party is tonight because it’s all Jenna has been able to talk about for the past week.” I swear I see his eyes roll as he says this last part, and the slightly annoyed intonation in his voice seems to suggest that he’s not personally a big fan of birthday parties in general.